Class #9: Criticality-Based Motion Planning –
            Assembly Planning and Target Finding
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Four pictures (left) illustrating assembly planning and the concept of a blocking relation. On the right, two robots (black dots) searching for an intruder (target) in a polygonal environment.

  • Topics
    - Principles of criticality-based planning and cell decomposition
    - Application to assembly planning: motion space, blocking relation, and non-directional blocking graph
    - Interference diagram
    - Application to target finding: visibility cells, information states
  • Required Readings:
    • The non-directional blocking graph approach to assembly planning:
      R.H. Wilson and J.C. Latombe. Geometric Reasoning About Assembly. Artificial Intelligence, 71(2), 1994. [pdf]
    • Target finding:
      S.M. LaValle, D. Lin, L.J. Guibas, J.C. Latombe, and R. Motwani. Visibility-Based Pursuit-Evasion in a Polygonal Environment. Proc. 5th Workshop on Algorihtms and Data Structures (WADS'97), pages 17--30. Springer Verlag, 1997. [pdf]
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      S.M. LaValle, D. Lin, L.J. Guibas, J.C. Latombe, and R. Motwani. Finding an Unpredictable Target in a Workspace with Obstacles.       Proc. IEEE Int'l Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pages 737--742, 1997. [pdf]
  • Other Readings:
    • Research at Sandia Labs and elsewhere:
      Some of the best work in assembly planning has been done at Sandia Labs. More papers can be found here. This site also contains a directory of research projects in assembly planning. 
    • Implemented assembly planners:
      S.G. Kaufman, R.H. Wilson, R.E. Jones, T.L. Calton, and A.L. Ames. The Archimedes 2 Mechanical Assembly Planning System. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages 3361-3368, 1996. [pdf]

      B. Romney. Atlas: An Automatic Assembly Sequencing and Fixturing System. Proceedings of the International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Geometric Modelling, W. Strasser, R. Klein, and R. Rau (eds.), Springer-Verlag, pages 397-415, 1997. [pdf]
  • Powerpoint slides:

o       Introduction 

o       Paper 1  

o       Paper 2